


And Still I Persist

by biggrstaffbunch



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-11
Updated: 2012-12-11
Packaged: 2017-11-20 22:13:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/590207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biggrstaffbunch/pseuds/biggrstaffbunch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day in London, you go walking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Still I Persist

 

 |  
  
One day in London,  
you go walking.  
Rose, towheaded and flushed with cold,   
presses close to your side like  
a vine frames a window, or  
like a shadow.  
Her voice is thin and sharp  
\--a needle, a knife--  
as she says:  
"When I'm gone, I'll be a ghost,"  
and because it's true,  
You frown.  
  
"Well," you respond, the wind heavy at your back  
clouds gathering in the sky  
(a storm is coming)  
"At least I'll get to keep you."  
  
A clap of thunder; she laughs.  
The rain begins to fall, first in  
delicate arrows  
then in longer strands of  
silver, flashing light.  
  
In the downpour, she is glorious.  
Soaked to the shivering skin.  
  
Her hand winds through your own  
finger against finger  
pulse beating warm  
little messages into your wrist.  
  
"I'll be like Casper," she decides  
and lays her head on your shoulder.  
 _Not quite_ , is what you do not say  
She would not be a friendly spirit,  
a benevolent gift.  
With hollow eyes and gauzy skin  
she would be one more condemnation  
crowding your magic blue box  
which is already full of people you can't let go.  
  
Bigger on the inside;  
but not big enough.  
Rose would drown under the ocean  
of your regrets.  
Walk the halls of your home  
like a widow of the sea  
looking for a lighthouse beam  
to split the darkness in half  
and carry her away.  
  
You don't want to share this ugly future with her  
because it's a Tuesday and there are chips  
and you can already taste the salt of her thumb on your lips  
as she feeds you.   
It's London. She is alive.  
Tomorrow is yesterday and it has not yet come  
This is the benefit of a time machine.  
  
"Like Casper," you echo, and let her keep  
her illusions.  
It is not the first lie you will have ever told  
your Rose.  
  
  
|  
  
Her lips are hot against yours  
burning like the scrape  
of a matchstick lit;  
there is a tiny flame   
in the pocket of her mouth and  
you put it out by kissing her.  
All little boys  
(even Time Lords)  
want to be firefighters in their own fashion.  
  
Or heroes of some kind.  
And, really:  
If you could breathe life into her  
you would  
at every turn.  
  
But you think,  
as she gasps into your neck  
her hips nestled in your hands,  
that you are feeding her death  
instead.  
  
"Oh," she sobs. "More."  
  
Gluttony is a sin, but you feed her.  
You're starving, yourself  
and you take a bite  
of her delicate veins  
mapping her heartbeats  
with the trace of your tongue.  
  
There will be a day that you  
cannot remember  
whether she tastes like   
moonlight or girl.  
  
So you catch her mouth again,  
and make a vow  
to write down her recipe.  
  
  
|  
  
All that's left in the end  
is the silence  
of white walls  
and the scuff from her trainers  
as she fought to stay.  
  
  
|  
  
Bazoolium and blue sweaters  
an army of--  
you can't even say the word.  
  
She's gone.   
  
  
|  
  
  
You visit Woman Wept once more  
after cycling back to various points   
of your own timeline  
and risking the complete collapse  
of the universe as you know it  
just for a glimpse  
of her legs left bare in her school skirt  
as she skivved off classes  
to smoke in the doorway  
of her neighbor's flat.  
She was fifteen, then twelve, then sixteen and crying  
over a boy named Jimmy.  
  
You look into the distance  
at a spire of water that has  
inexplicably hardened into something cold and fragile.   
  
Once, the ocean and the lakes of this world were as malleable as silk.   
Now, everything is cast in the shell of time,   
a statue to be admired, a monument to grief.  
  
You have become frozen  
the way this planet has.  
  
There's this image of her in your dreams;  
(and you've never dreamt before now  
images soaked in color  
saturated with emotion  
so that your chest expands with it, breathing it down  
like a volatile thing)  
She is walking down the road  
at night, and there is the dull  
orange glow of streetlights   
in her hair.  
  
Her scarf loops around her neck, her sleeves falling over  
her fingertips, her skirt  
falling to her feet.  
She looks impossibly small.  
And you think of picking her up  
in the cup of your hands  
depositing her in a jar  
labeled  _my third heart_  
and without whimsy  
putting her on a shelf  
where she could not ever fade away.  
  
You realize   
that you can't.  
  
You realize that you  
can't see her face.  
Details are slipping away  
and you are desperate to  
remember.  
  
But this is   
the transience of life  
how lovers become  
strangers.  
  
You love humans for their very way  
of picking up  
and moving on.  
But you are not human  
and there is no one to  
help fool you into thinking  
otherwise, this time.  
  
The wave overhead shimmers   
as you struggle to catch the outline  
of her form in the panels  
under which you both,  
enjoined,  
once stood.  
  
The stars give you no answers.  
  
You set your machine to 1987 and  
pray for no  
paradoxes.  
  
  
|  
  
  
The burden you bear   
is that you will live forever  
into eons, into infinity  
until your bones fall into ashes  
that rise again.  
You will ache with the need to sleep  
and still you will live  
and lose   
and love  
and lose.  
  
By now you know also that  
she, too, will live forever  
a dust mote sparkling  
in empty rooms  
a fine layer of frost,  
every winter on every planet  
you ever visit, ever again.  
Her name will sit  
in your brain. Patiently  
meditating on its own importance.  
  
You're either too clever  
or not clever enough  
to be scared anymore.  
  
 _Everything comes to an end_ , but  
circles don't.  
  
You close your eyes and she turns  
around and around and around  
in your head.  
  
  
|


End file.
